The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may not constitute prior art.
Fiber optic sensors have been used in semiconductor applications for measuring temperature. This is primarily due to the fact that fiber optic sensors are immune to radio frequency (RF), microwave radiation, and high voltage. Therefore, fiber optic sensors can provide more accurate temperature measurements in a semiconductor wafer processing chamber without being affected by RF, microwave radiation and high voltage, which would otherwise occur in non-optic temperature sensors. Accordingly, fiber optic sensors may be integrated into an electrostatic chuck (ESC) to more accurately and reliably measure the temperature of the wafer.
Generally, multiple optic sensors are provided for multiple target locations in semiconductor applications, with each optic sensor requiring a fiber optic cable and a control box that calculates and determines a temperature of a target location based on the light transmitted through the fiber optic cable. Therefore, multiple fiber optic cables are required to be routed through the processing chamber to individual control boxes, thereby taking up valuable space in the semiconductor chamber and resulting in a complicated design.
These issues with the implementation of fiber optic sensors in a semiconductor application, among other applications with challenging environments, is addressed by the present disclosure.